Remember the “Ban Bossy” campaign? Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook created the “Ban Bossy” campaign, recruiting a horde of celebrities, in order to make sure that girls didn’t feel put out by being called bossy in the 4th grade and thus ruining their entire lives. (“Being labeled something matters,” says actress Jennifer Garner in the Ban Bossy campaign video. So does developing a thick skin.)
Now, however, Christian Hoff Sommers of the American Enterprise Institute is here to tell the truth: the research that the “Ban Bossy” campaign relies on is wrong. Skewed. Misinterpreted.
We don’t need to ban bossy for our girls. We need to teach them to read and interpret scholarly materials.